The Walking Dead: What happened to Frank Darabont?

As a new Walking Dead spin-off is set to premiere soon, some new fans have wondered what happened to the original show runner.

The Walking Dead was an iconic piece of 2010s media as it reignited the public’s love for all things zombie-related.

The series, which ran for 11 seasons until it ended in 2022, followed the adventures of Sheriff Rick Grimes and his survivor group as they made their way to different safe zones across the apocalypse.

The show has seen three different show runners over the year, but the series’ first one had the most controversy surrounding them.

Walking Dead show runner cast out by AMC

Frank Darabont is credited for helping to develop and produce the iconic six episodes that make up The Walking Dead Season 1.

Darabont was the one to shop the show around to different networks until he found a home for it on AMC. He was even given the honor of directing and writing the pilot episode — Days Gone Bye — that is still considered one of the series’ best episodes.

However, even though Darabont wrote four out of the six original Walking Dead episodes, he was quickly taken off the show as AMC fired him because the “network [was] seeking to shake up the format in response to Season 1’s runaway success.”

AMC was looking to produce double the amount of episodes in Season 2, but on a smaller budget and, as Darabont was an openly advocate for TWD’s grand scale, it wasn’t surprising when they decided to go with another show runner.

However, things weren’t as simple as replacing a show runner, as Darabont alleged in a lawsuit that he never received payment for developing The Walking Dead and was wrongfully dismissed without warning in order to avoid a contractual pay rise that would’ve kicked in for seasons 2 and 3. The lawsuit was filed for $280 million.

Thankfully the network settled the case in 2021 for $200 million and provided “the plaintiffs’ future revenue sharing related to certain future streaming exhibition of The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead.”

Though it’s sad that The Walking Dead creator was not treated fairly by the network that benefited from his work, at least Darabont saw a bit of justice in the end.

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